CHAPTER XXXV.

AN EMBASSY FOR STEPHANIE.

Two months slipped past for Gustavus Adolphus, two months of strenuous nights and days, two months of petty hostilities and multifarious negotiations. Richelieu was attempting to isolate Austria, bargaining with the Princes of the League that they should stand aside as neutrals, bargaining with Gustavus that, if they did, he should respect their neutrality. Then there could be nothing to prevent Gustavus from crushing Austria, and Richelieu's cup of joy would be full. Maximilian had indeed made a secret treaty with France, hoping to save his dominions from the Swede. But Richelieu's plan for isolation fell through, for Gustavus found reason to suspect the intentions of Maximilian, and marched into Franconia, whence Count Tilly had driven out Gustavus's General, Horn. When Gustavus marched, he had with him Horn, and Banner, and Duke William of Weimar, and forty thousand men.

Count Tilly was forced to retreat to the very confines of Bavaria, while Gustavus made a triumphant entry into Nuremberg, which received him with immense ovations.

Two months had also slipped past for Ferdinand and much had happened in Austria. It was summed up in this that Wallenstein had been gathering an army. He had refused to consider the question of its command in the field. He had undertaken its muster, contented to show the Emperor once again how potent was the name of Wallenstein wherewith to conjure men from all the quarters of Germany and beyond.

But Ferdinand the Emperor and his Father Confessor, encouraged yet to hope, resting on the fact that an army was being mustered between Vienna and Prague, at Znaim, to which haven Wallenstein had returned, making it his headquarters, were nevertheless perturbed about the attitude of the Elector Maximilian. Father Lamormain knew that the French Cardinal was endeavouring to detach him from the Emperor, knew also that Maximilian had much to gain from neutrality, immunity for his country, which had hitherto been spared the devastations of the war, and eventual aggrandisement for himself if the sun of Austria sank to its setting. On the other hand, both the Jesuit and the Emperor remembered oft-repeated proofs of Maximilian's fidelity to the Catholic faith and to the Emperor.

"Your Majesty must send an ambassador!" said Father Lamormain. "Such an ambassador as by his own nobility and charm of person and of eloquence shall sway the mind of the Elector, nay, his very heart, so that it shall tend towards your Majesty and thereby abide. And that quickly!"

Ferdinand smiled that pallid half-sardonic smile of his which seemed to sum up the weariness of generations of Habsburgs, and to be in itself a satiric comment upon the futility of human endeavours to stem the progress of events. He put a question--

"Whom?"

"The Archduchess Stephanie!"

The Emperor frowned the merest suspicion of a frown. Father Lamormain watched him peacefully, as if it had been an affair of shuttlecocks and not a deep political design.

"Alone? Since when has Austria depended upon its women?"

"To the first question your Majesty, No! To the second, Always!"

"Ah!" said the Emperor. "My son Ferdinand."

"The Archduke Ferdinand! And with him the Archduchess Stephanie."

"Is she likely to add such cogency to our arguments that Bavaria will steady itself to be our last buttress?"

"The Elector Maximilian has sought her in marriage. The project has been deferred by the war, but the living princess, with pleading in her tones and promises in her eyes, should outweigh all the bribes of Richelieu."

"If Stephanie chose, she could bewitch him that he could not but choose to adhere to our side. But it has seemed to me that she was indifferent to his suit."

"Princesses can have no choice of their spouses!" said Father Lamormain. "Your Majesty must be round with her, leave her no room for wavering, bid her to her duty."

"You have as much influence with her as I, Father. If I do my part, so must you."

"Your Majesty may count on my endeavour! It is a happy moment when the need of Austria must outbalance all personal whims."

"The roads are open? You can arrange for a sufficient and well-equipped retinue, for a small company of our goodliest dames and demoiselles?"

"We are still Austria, your Majesty!"

"The project is good, Father! Put it in hand at once. The more haste the better."

Ferdinand's face cleared perceptibly.

On further reflection Father Lamormain judged it the wiser plan to prepare the mind of the Archduchess for the order of the Emperor. He knew perhaps better than any one, except Stephanie, how rebellious a Habsburger there was in her. It is even possible that the Archduchess considered her own doings as fulfilling all the _reasonable_ demand of the parental laws. She would, however, have placed her own interpretation on the meaning of "_reasonable_."

He lost no time in seeking her out in her own apartments, and entreating a few moments' conversation.

He began by asking her whether by any chance a young woman, Elspeth Reinheit by name, had travelled with her from Prague, on her way home from Halberstadt.

The Archduchess, evidently astonished at the question, said--

"No! What makes you ask?"

"There is a certain Lutheran pastor, your Highness, who has journeyed to Vienna, one Melchior Rad, who seeks this Elspeth Reinheit."

"Yes! But what has that to do with me?"

"He is convinced that this girl was brought by a certain mysterious Countess Ottilie von Thüringen, _of whom I have more than once heard_, to Prague, that she set out for Znaim, and from Znaim for Vienna."

"Indeed! I know of no Countess of the name!"

"Nor do I," said the Jesuit. "Though I have searched the records of heraldry," he added quietly.

The Archduchess felt that the Jesuit was playing the cat to her mouse.

He proceeded: "But the singular thing is that when asked to describe the Countess Ottilie he described your Highness passably well."

"Whom he may have seen at Halberstadt!" said the Archduchess, determined that the cat should not gobble her.

"Only he has not been there!" said Father Lamormain.

"A prodigy!" said the Archduchess.

"More prodigious still, he recognised your voice, though he did not see your Highness by reason of the darkness!"

"Recognised my voice!" said the Archduchess, now roused to a fine appearance of indignation. "Where was this prowling Lutheran that he could hear my voice and neither see me nor be seen?"

"Upon the wall of the orchard close in the gardens of the palace of Vienna!"

But the Archduchess was quick of wit. "Dear Father Lamormain," she said without a blush, and with an amused irony in her tones, "since when is it reported that I have taken to assignations in the dark in orchard closes?"

"Nay!" said Father Lamormain. "Perchance I used not the right words. It was clumsy of me! The honest Pastor Rad but recognised the voice of his Countess talking to her lover in the orchard close!"

"And the lover?" the Archduchess asked with an accent of merriment. "Did his Lutheran sapience recognise him also?"

"He had followed him thither!" said the Jesuit. "It was no other than our faithful Scot, who has to-day departed for Tilly's army!"

"I believe none of your pastor's tales! There is no Elspeth Reinheit about the palace, even in the kitchens, no Ottilie von Thüringen that I have ever heard of in Vienna. As for me I have a suitor, or had one, of whom you have spoken aforetime, the Elector Maximilian. One suitor at a time is trouble enough."

The Jesuit knew too many particulars of the doings of Ottilie von Thüringen to be in any doubt as to her identity, but his suspicions of Nigel were too slight to credit the whole story of the pastor, so he said--

"It would be a great ease to the mind of the Emperor could you but take the Elector's suit in grave earnest," and he sighed heavily. "For the Empire is in great jeopardy. The Swede advances towards us. We have nothing as yet to oppose him but Tilly's army, gathered from a hundred garrisons. The Holy Father refuses his aid. France, ever jealous of us, seeks to bribe Maximilian into neutrality. With Maximilian and the other princes of the League neutral, what chance does Austria stand?"

There was no mistaking the priest's seriousness. It impressed the Archduchess more than if he had preached a sermon on the end of all things. She had an uneasy conscience, for had she not helped to pull down the Empire?

"But what can I do?" she asked.

"You can give yourself for the Empire! In a time of peace you would have been wedded before this to whomsoever the Emperor judged it fit. In this time of war you can gain eternal salvation by offering yourself to our old ally."

"But how?"

"An embassy goes out to Bavaria to meet Maximilian to beg him to delay his scheme of neutrality, to oppose a strong front, to let his cities be besieged but not surrendered, to fight inch by inch of his soil, until we can bring a fresh army to his aid and drive back the Swede."

"And the embassy consists of?"

"The Archduke Ferdinand! Your Highness might well go with him, and some of our ladies. When Maximilian hears you plead for the Empire, hears you offer to stay with him and share his toils and his glory, there will be dealt the death-blow to the plots of France, and for Sweden it will be the beginning of the end."

"And what if the Elector flout me? It is ill offering the goods in the market that have once been denied to the buyer."

The Father Confessor smiled.

"We have never denied Maximilian. And the good wine has become the mellower in our Austrian cellars!"

The Archduchess drew up her head and pouted her red lips.

"We will consider this matter. The Empire shall not perish for need of us. Though, in faith, wanting Maximilian, the Empire still has Wallenstein!" She looked covertly at the priest as she mentioned the name.

"Your Highness has at times much prized our Wallenstein!"

"Yes, and with cause! By Wallenstein and not by Maximilian shall we be delivered. By all means let us use Maximilian as our buttress, but our sword and buckler in the open field will be Wallenstein. I would it were he and not Maximilian that I had to seek out!"

Father Lamormain marked the maidenly flush that accompanied the outspokenness, and adding them to what he had already known of her doings, he began to regard the tale of Pastor Rad as arising from some strange ferment in his brain. In any case his main point was gained. The Archduchess would go. How deep were her feelings towards the Elector, or towards Wallenstein, he could not gauge. But he knew the depth of the Habsburg pride, that, rebellious or not, must in the long-run fan the altar flame in the shrine of the Imperial house.

But Father Lamormain, reader of hearts and minds, of eyes and mouths and tones, was not omniscient, and he did not read the Archduchess Stephanie; for how should he know that in one short hour she had thrown down the image of Wallenstein and set up that of the Scottish soldier of fortune. Had he reflected that the western road might lead to the Scot as easily as to the Elector? The cat was allowing the mouse too much law.